


Like Balloons

by orphan_account



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's, Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 21:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4115638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fire at Fazbear's Fright, the animatronics are purchased in pieces at auction.  Balloon Boy and the Marionette are the first to be reassembled, but Balloon Boy is missing something very important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Balloons

The children's spirits were long gone by the time of the auction, but Joel—a sleepy-eyed young man in a red jumpsuit—still thought there was something odd about the remnants of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza (more recently Fazbear's Fright).  His boss, Dr. Forrester, hadn't bought all of them; he wasn't interested in the few plushies, figurines, and other prizes that had survived the fire which destroyed the old Fazbear building.  Instead, Forrester had only bid on the parts and pieces of the pizzeria's famous animatronics.

 _And I can see why no one else wanted them_ , Joel thought as he unpacked the new acquisitions in Forrester's warehouse.  The things were, frankly, creepy as all get out, not to mention in terrible shape.  Almost everyone knew the legends surrounding Freddy Fazbear's Pizza—that six children had been murdered by an employee, that the building was haunted by ghosts, that the animatronics themselves were possessed.  All these facts kept most bidders away from the robots, although the other trinkets had sold quickly to collectors and sentimental adults who remembered childhood fun at Freddy's.

Dr. Forrester, though, had no interest in legends.  He saw the broken animatronics only as a cheap source of parts for his own party rental business.  It was a small side-business Forrester had started for extra income, and it wasn't doing too well: Forrester was _horrible_ with children, and his friendly assistant Frank was the only reason their parties had any success at all.  But fortunately for Forrester, his office's janitor was handy with machines and had built a few robots of his own.  That janitor was Joel.

So that left Joel holed up in the warehouse with orders to salvage whatever he could from the boxes of parts Forrester had purchased.  If he could repair any of the animatronics, or create something new from the remnants, great.  If not. . . well, those parts might be useful for _something_.

Joel emptied the first box and studied the parts he had laid out on the concrete warehouse floor.  Mostly, he just had a jumble of pieces, some from the robotic endoskeletons which had inhabited the animatronics' mascot suits, and some from the suits themselves.  Still, Joel thought he could piece together two of the smaller robots from what he had found, using an old Fazbear's flyer as a guide.  One of the animatronics pictured looked like a short human boy with a ventriloquist dummy's face, and the other was a lanky, black and white puppet with a white mask like a mime's makeup.

"Ugh, vent figures and mimes.  What were they thinking over at Fazbear's?" Joel muttered.  He raked a hand through his rumpled brown hair and looked over the damaged parts, streaked with soot from the fire.  "But I guess you guys can't help what they did to you."

\--

Balloon Boy awoke three days later, when Joel finally reconnected the wires that led from his power source to his electronic brain.  Joel had worked hard cleaning, repainting, and assembling the short animatronic, but of course Balloon Boy knew nothing of that.  His last memories were of haunting Fazbear's Fright, when the phantom of his consciousness tormented the security guard there, trying to dispose of him as the animatronics had been disposing of adults ever since one man had hurt the children.  Even at Fazbear's Fright, thirty years after the murders and with their physical bodies in pieces, the animatronics remembered their rage at the man who had worn Golden Freddy to lure in his victims—and their fury at the other adults, the parents who let their children be led away, the Fazbear employees who covered up the murders, every adult who heard a rumor and did nothing to bring the killer to justice.  The spirits of the children themselves did that, chasing him into Springtrap's deadly embrace, but that didn't make the other adults any less guilty.  The animatronics' programming prevented them from exacting their revenge during the day—but at night, they could do whatever they wanted.

That last guard had been different, apparently.  Balloon Boy wasn't sure exactly how he had done it, but somehow he freed the children's spirits, allowing them to float like balloons out of their prison and away to—well, wherever the spirits of dead humans went.  And then the guard had set Fazbear's Fright on fire, intending to destroy Springtrap and the rest of them for good.  Balloon Boy couldn't blame him—and maybe he was even a little grateful.  No children would ever come to Fazbear's again; his days of handing out his beloved balloons were over.  What was left for him in a world with no children and no balloons?  He thought they all would die when their robot bodies were destroyed.  The animatronics had become sentient in those bodies, and they assumed their phantom forms were still tied to those physical forms—and Balloon Boy did indeed cease to think and feel when the flames reached his broken parts in their box in the office.

But, somehow, he was alive again, peering through round blue eyes at the sleepy-faced human man oiling his joints.  He kept still, playing dead, until the man lifted Balloon Boy's propeller hat and pressed the hidden button which activated him.

"Hi!" Balloon Boy trilled, following his programming.  He moved his right arm forward, offering a balloon—a balloon that wasn't there.  Both his hands, he realized, were empty.

 _My sign. . . my balloon!_   Balloon Boy's smiling face could not show his profound disappointment, but it was just as well.  This strange man didn't need to know that he was sentient.

"Hello!"  A giggle.  All his sound effects were in working order.  All his parts moved smoothly.  The human had done a good job repairing him.  The man too seemed pleased with his work, smiling and patting Balloon Boy on the head.  He gave the propeller on Balloon Boy's hat a spin with one finger, then stood from his crouching position and moved out of the animatronic's line of sight.

 _What's he doing now?_   Balloon Boy turned his head, very slowly and just a little bit, to follow the man's movement to his left.  He had gone over to a wall where a dark, lanky figure hung limply from puppet strings leading to his head and arms.

 _Marionette!_   Balloon Boy's disappointment faded a bit.  _I'm not alone_. . . .  Like himself, the Marionette had been cleaned and reassembled, with his fabric body and wire armature repaired and his white mask gleaming like new.  He looked as good as when he had first come out of his box.

 _I hope I look that nice!_ Balloon Boy thought.  _I wish the kids could see us!_   The thought of children piqued the small animatronic's curiosity as he watched the human man adjust the Marionette's mask and straighten his limbs a bit.  _Maybe. . . maybe there will be children again!  Maybe this man is nice, like the last guard, and he's going to help us. . . ._

But the strange, large room they were in wasn't Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, and while there were some piles of mechanical parts, Balloon Boy couldn't see any other whole animatronics.  And he didn't have his sign or his balloon.

_Things still aren't right. . . .  They won't ever be right again._

\--

Balloon Boy didn't move again until the human left, late that night.  The man had spent the rest of the day cleaning other animatronic parts, and by the time Balloon Boy took his first hesitant steps, an array of pieces was laid out on the floor, drying.  Balloon Boy toddled over to them to see if he could recognize any of his friends.  There was Toy Chica's beak. . . a black bow tie. . . an endoskeleton ear that might have belonged to Foxy or the Mangle. . . .

"Balloon Boy. . . ."

The short animatronic turned to face the wall where the Marionette hung.  The tall puppet was looking down at him, smiling as always.  Unlike the others, his face couldn't move, yet he was good at conveying emotion with a tilt of his head or a wave of his pointed fingers.  As far as Balloon Boy could tell, the Marionette was genuinely happy to see him.

"Hi."  Balloon Boy walked over to the wall, more steady on his feet now that he was used to moving again.  "Do you know where we are?"

"No."  The Marionette reached one long arm across his narrow body to unhook the strings connected to his other hand.  "I suppose that young man repaired us."

"He seemed nice.  Do you think he's nice?  Are we going to have to kill him?"  Once he started talking, Balloon Boy felt like he couldn't stop.  It had been so long!  "I really don't want to hurt anyone else, but we aren't in the pizzeria anymore, and the others are all in pieces."  He finally stopped his disjointed rambling and looked down, embarrassed to be babbling in front of the Marionette.

Freed of his strings, the Marionette looked down at his fabric body.  The human man was rather short, and he had hung the Marionette up at his own eye level.  The puppet was so tall, this meant his striped legs were dragging the floor.  He bent them and managed to raise himself up on their pointed tips, wobbling a little before regaining his balance.  Balloon Boy was still slumped in front of him.  The Marionette bent his eternally smiling face a moment; then he dropped to his knees and crouched where he could see the other's face.

"It. . . will be all right."

Balloon Boy's round eyes rolled up to meet the black holes in the Marionette's mask.  "But my sign's gone.  And my—m-my balloon."  His cheerful child's voice wavered mechanically, and his mouth shifted a little.  He couldn't frown, exactly, but his face was more expressive than the Marionette's own.

"Then we will look for them."

The Marionette stood again and reached down his hand.  Balloon Boy looked up at him then raised his own round hand to place in the puppet's.  The two animatronics went over to the boxes of parts, and Balloon Boy watched as the Marionette sifted through them.  When the puppet pulled out a sooty rectangular piece, Balloon Boy suddenly made his giggling sound.  The Marionette started and nearly dropped the part he was holding.

"Sorry," Balloon Boy apologized, although he thought it was funny to surprise the Marionette.  "But that's my sign!"

The Marionette rubbed the sign on his fabric leg, and sure enough, the word "Balloons!" appeared faintly through the grime.  The puppet stuck the sign through the hole in Balloon Boy's left fist.

"There.  I think the human man will clean it for you tomorrow.  He did a very good job on the rest of you."

"Really?  I wish I could see."  Balloon Boy looked down at himself the best he could, but because of his shape, he could only see as far as his stomach.

"Maybe there is a mirror here somewhere. . . ."  The Marionette trailed off as he rummaged around in the last box.  He had found parts for most of the other animatronics, but one thing was missing.  "I am afraid your balloon is not here."

"It's not?"  The sadness was clear in Balloon Boy's voice, but to his credit, he tried to cover it up.  "Th-that's okay.  Maybe the man will make me a new one. . . ."  He was silent a minute with his blue eyes focused on the box.  "The children flew away like balloons.  Maybe my balloon went with them."

"You saw them too?"  When the smaller animatronic nodded, the Marionette lifted one clawed hand.  He hesitated, then rested it on Balloon Boy's shoulder.

"It really will be all right.  I promise."

Balloon Boy sat hunched for another moment, but then he turned abruptly and put his stubby arms around the Marionette's fabric torso.  The expressionless white mask turned down to look at the top of Balloon Boy's head before the Marionette folded his lanky arms around the smaller animatronic and held him.

\--

When Joel came in the warehouse the next morning, he carried a small cardboard box with "Fazbear" written on the side in black marker.  He dropped the box down on the floor near Balloon Boy and looked over the animatronic, proud of the work he'd done on it.

"Lookin' good, kiddo.  And here's another box of parts—it was still in the back of Dr. Forrester's mom's truck.  Maybe I can fix up some more of you guys."  Joel stopped and chuckled at himself.  "Listen to me, talking to robots!  Next thing you know, we'll be watching movies together. . . ."  He broke off as his eyes fell on Balloon Boy again.

 _What's that in his hand?  I knew he was supposed to hold something with those holes, but I didn't put anything there. . . ._   Joel glanced around, half-expecting some robot-vandalizer to jump out at him, then he bent down to look closer.  The sign needed cleaning up, but he could still read it.

"'Balloons!'?"  Joel looked at Balloon Boy's shining, grinning face.  "Well, at least it explains something."  He turned to the new box he had brought in and pulled out a sooty, ovoid object.  "I wondered what this plastic balloon went to."

Forgetting about the mysterious appearance of the sign, Joel plucked it from Balloon Boy's hand and went over to the work sink in the back of the warehouse.  A few minutes later, Joel returned and knelt down in front of Balloon Boy.

"I still need to repaint them, but you can hold them until I get a chance—I want to work on the other animatronics first."  Joel stuck the sign back into Balloon Boy's left hand. . . and the stem of a faded but still cheerful red and yellow plastic balloon into his right.  "There!  You just may turn this business around—the kids'll love you at their birthday parties.  You're just their size, and kids always like balloons."

As Joel became absorbed in his work, Balloon Boy turned his round blue eyes to gaze up at his beloved balloon.  Then he risked moving his head, just enough so that he could look over at the Marionette, hanging again on the wall by his strings.  The puppet's white mask beamed at him.

_It really will be all right._

_I promise._


End file.
